AustLit

'Graeme Davison is the latest, and perhaps most distinguished, convert to the cause of family history. Davison admits that he had always deliberately avoided family history, but encouraged (appropriately!) by his family, and conceding that its appeal strengthens ‘as our past grows longer and our future shrinks’, he has finally succumbed (237). It might have seemed a challenging prospect, given a lack of letters and diaries and very little memorabilia, but there was one tantalising piece of oral tradition. Davison’s mother had told him that their ancestor, Jane Hewett, a widow, and her eight children, arriving in Port Phillip in July 1850, had climbed down the ship’s ladder and, landing at Sandridge, walked the three miles across the swamp to the city. What had been the cause of this rough introduction to what was still the Port Phillip District? ...'